Sean over at Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician already went with the Schoolhouse Rock standby “Three Is A Magic Number,” so I had to come up with a different song involving 1970′s television and the number three.

The brackets are finally out, and as an Orange fan, you can’t be much happier to see a three next to SU. While you spend your Monday morning poring over your pool brackets and inventing illnesses that will enable you to leave work early on Friday, here are a few quick thoughts.

It looks like the Orange’s historical performance in Madison Square Garden last week was rewarded on a few levels:

1. Seeding

SU went from being projected as a fifth or sixth seed and climbed all the way up to a three. Even after the UConn marathon, I didn’t think SU could get any higher than a four seed without beating Louisville, but the committee believed otherwise.

2. SU Is The Only Big East Team In The South Region

The Midwest has Louisville and West Virginia, the West has UConn and Marquette and the East has Pitt and Marquette. SU had a sparkling 11-1 record in non-conference play (12-1 if you count the Le Moyne win) and took its lumps in conference play. When you consider the strength of the conference, it’s a nice sigh of relief to see no other Big East teams in the region. Sure, taking down UConn in six overtimes, beating West Virginia the next night in another overtime and controlling Louisville for the first half on Saturday does wonders for the team’s confidence against conference foes, but I like to think the selection committee did Syracuse a favor here.

That’s not to say that there aren’t any teams in the South good enough to beat SU, or that SU isn’t capable of putting up a stinker against a lesser team, but I think that not having another Big East team in the bracket definitely helps SU’s chances through the first four rounds.

3. Syracuse Is Scheduled For The Second Day of First-Round Action

Will one extra day of rest make a difference? In the short run, probably not since even on short rest, the Orange would likely roll over Stephen F. Austin, but when you look back to 2006, the Orange won the conference tournament on a Saturday and looked absolutely spent as it lost to Texas A&M the following Thursday.

Looking at the teams seeded higher than SU in this year’s South region, there are the powerful Oklahoma Sooners and a UNC team that loves to turn every game into a high-scoring track meet. You also can’t discount teams like Clemson, Gonzaga and Arizona State. With that in mind, the fatigued ‘Cuse squad needs every minute of rest it can get.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 11:28 pm by Brian G. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.